Short-term study of microbial communities on plastic paddles in Te Whakaraupo/Lyttelton Harbour, Aotearoa/New Zealand

This study aims to increase our understanding of plastic impacts the microbial communities present in the marine environment of the Te Whakaraupo/Lyttelton Harbour, Aotearoa/New Zealand. Plastic paddles were deployed in the marine environment and sampled at 1, 2, 6 and 12 weeks. The prokaryotic and fungal community compositions were investigated by Illumina MiSeq sequencing of the prokaryotic V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene and the fungal ITS2 region.